And they're surprised?

The Times of Israel reports that EU officials are "concerned over reports in the Israeli media that the defense minister has announced a series of restrictions affecting the Union’s actions to support the Palestinian people”. Further, the IDF, under orders from Defence Minister Ya'alon are "to prevent EU representatives from entering the Gaza Strip via Israel."

In case anyone's been asleep these past few days, this is claimed to be in response to the EU's decision to "ban the funding of and cooperation with Israeli institutions operating beyond the Green Line." Now, we all have our own views on what should or should not be happening beyond the Green Line - and not being an Israeli citizen, I have no intention of entering that debate on a website run from Israel - but the EU response smacks of either political naivety, overweening arrogance or a mixture of the two. In effect, the EU response to the reports (if true, and they probably are) appears to suggest that EU officials can't begin to believe that the Israelis didn't immediately roll over and promise to do whatever it was that the EU wanted them to do.

Anyone running a viable, functioning state, with a vibrant economy, is hardly going to roll over at the behest of an extra-territorial agency. For goodness sake, the Israeli government doesn't do that for the US, the major aid and defence funders! It should be borne in mind that there are already earlier reports that Israel is preparing to pull out of other joint, hi-tech projects with the EU, in which the Israelis are major partners, financially and technically.

It's not all bad news for the EU: the article further reported that "Ya’alon’s directive includes orders to halt any assistance that the IDF is providing to representatives of the EU working on humanitarian projects in the West Bank’s Area C, which is under full Israeli civilian and military control. In other parts of the West Bank, Israel will continue to cooperate with EU officials as usual." If memory serves, Area C is that bit adjacent to Jerusalem which is subject to possible new Israeli house building.

You will note that I refrain from querying the EU's motives in enacting this new directive, except that a cynic (which I vehemently protest that I am not - please ignore the fingers crossed behind my back when I write that) might wonder whether this was, in some way a quid-pro-quo for the (sort-of) decision to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organisation.

It will hardly come as a surprise to readers of this site to note that the real sufferers of this decision by the EU (if effectively enacted) will be, for example, the Palestinian employees of companies such as Soda Stream, paid at Israeli rates and employed under Israeli terms and conditions. Soda Stream could (and will, if necessary) relocate inside the Green Line, or into a settlement block. And the main losers will, inevitably, be those self-same Palestinians that the EU claims to want to protect.

Some protection...

Post by: Brian Goldfarb